Publication Items

Top officials at the Bureau of Ocean Energy, Management, Regulation and Enforcement have been charged with scientific misconduct regarding a possible cover-up over the suspension and sudden reinstatement of Dr. Charles Monnett, who authored a paper suggesting climate change was harming polar bears.

The US Dept. of Agriculture will award more than 900 grants worth a total of about $11.6 million to individuals and companies around the country for projects such as installing photovoltaic solar panels for a barn, improving energy efficiency of greenhouses, and installing a geothermal system for an agricultural building.

In the Summer issue of SEJournal, Bill Dawson gets the inside story from the Monterey County Weekly's assistant editor Kera Abraham (pictured at left) and her award-winning stories involving clashing shades of green.

The massive trove of diplomatic cables disclosed by Wikileaks disclosed one of the Obama administration's darkest environmental secrets — that the U.S. held secret diplomatic talks on climate change during the run-up to the December 2009 Copenhagen meeting.

The Beat

By BILL DAWSON

The climate issue figured prominently in numerous House and Senate races this past fall, with much of the debate centering on the House-passed climate-energy bill – also called Waxman-Markey and the American Clean Energy and Security Act, but perhaps best known for its emission-reducing mechanism, “cap-and-trade.”

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility says the Dec. 21 memo implies that existing EPA openness policy meets White House criteria. Meanwhile, the Office of Management and Budget may again be tampering with agency science for political purposes — accused by Arizona congressman Raúl Grijalva (pictured) of censoring FOIA'd documents relating to the mid-summer estimate of Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

The media blog Gawker thinks it has uncovered a campaign to discredit the New Yorker writer after her August 2010 story on billionaires Charles and David H. Koch, who have secretly funded attacks on government regulations and bankrolled efforts to discredit settled climate science.

The organization MAPLight has pulled together information on who the leading contributors were from Oct. 14, 2008 through Oct. 13, 2010. See which incoming committee chairs received the most money from industries such as oil and gas, agriculture, construction, insurance, electric utility and forest products, and more.

Specific or broad environmental issues could play a role as voters decide which candidate to choose in many races. At the same time, the environment continues to score way down the list, according to pollsters, when voters are asked about all their priorities.